Friendly Fire (7 page)

“He says, ‘… guess you were surprised,' … now, here: ‘Will be on the bunker line about two more days, then back out into the field.'”

“Ugh!” Peg groaned. “That means more search and destroy.”

“No, it doesn't,” Gene said. “He's been doing company sweeps like he wrote in the other letter.”

“Same thing,” Peg said.

“No, it isn't,” Gene insisted. “A company sweep is—”

Peg waved her hand impatiently. “Go on with the letter.”

“All right, all right. He says, ‘Glad that all is well—weather here been rather good. Have decided not to take R&R if I can get a drop. So 'til later, hang loose.'” Gene looked at the letter more closely. “Hang loose'?”

“Hang loose, you know,” Peg said, “take it easy.”

Gene shrugged. “‘So 'til later, hang loose, Love Michael.'”

“That's it?”

“That's it,” Gene said. He passed the letter across the table to his wife.

Peg read through it quickly, “Oh, see,” she said, “he's decided for sure to ask for an early drop. You remember the letter before last Michael said he was writing the University of Missouri to get the necessary papers.”

Michael hoped to be released early from Vietnam so that he could be readmitted to the Agriculture School. Peg and Gene discussed for a moment what they thought his chances were; Michael himself had written that he felt they were very good. The only part of his letter that bothered them was that he would again be going into the field, that he wouldn't be in the relative safety of the fire base bunker line anymore. Still, in one of his first letters, Michael had written that he was in “probably one of the better places over here,” a comparatively quiet part of Vietnam.

“So he might be coming home in June,” Gene said.

“Looks that way,” Peg said, “knock wood.”

Gene finished his coffee and stood up “Well, Mother,” he said, “I guess I might as well try to fix the television antenna for you.”

“What's it like outside?”

“Fine,” Gene said. “Cold, but it's fine. The wind's stopped.”

He buttoned up his heavy woolen red and black plaid lumber jacket, turned off his hearing aid, put the earplug into his pocket and went outside.

The windblown television antenna was attached to a post near the east side of the farmhouse. Gene was just coming around that east corner, blowing hot breath on his fingertips and trying to remember where he had last put the light wrench he would need, when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed two automobiles turning into his driveway. Without his hearing aid he had not heard them approach and he fumbled beneath his lumber jacket for the earpiece, inserted it and thumbed the volume up.

Gene thought he recognized the first car, believed the parish priest, Father Shimon, had one like it, but that second car.… Gene read the black letters painted on the Chevrolet's olive-drab door:
U.S. ARMY
—
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY.
Gene's chest tightened, and he stood still while the priest and the Army sergeant stepped out of their cars and slammed shut the doors.

Gene watched them walking toward him as if in slow motion, their footsteps thundering across the metallic crust of the drifted snow. He tried to see beyond the country priest's black metal-framed glasses to what might show in his eyes. But Father Shimon's downcast lenses reflected only the snow. Not until the priest forced himself to look up did Gene recognize the fright, the despair, the agony within them, then very quietly Gene asked, “Is my boy dead?”

Father Shimon halted so abruptly that the Army sergeant, who was following, bumped into him from behind. “Gene,” the priest said, “this is Sergeant Fitzgerald. He's from Fifth Army Headquarters. He.…” Shimon was silent.

Gene looked beyond Father Shimon to the sergeant and asked again, “Is … my … boy …
dead?
”

“Let's go into the house, Gene,” Father Shimon said. “I want to talk to you there.”

“No!” Gene said, not moving. “I want to
know!
Tell me,
is
…
my … boy … dead?
”

“I can't tell you here,” Father Shimon said, his hand fluttering up toward Gene's shoulder. “Come into the house with us … please?”

Gene spun away before the priest's pale fingers could touch him.

Peg Mullen heard the back door open, heard Gene rushing up the stairs into the kitchen, heard him shouting,
“It's Mikey! It's Mikey!”
His voice half a sob, half a scream.

She hurried out of the sewing room in time to glimpse the Army uniform entering the kitchen. Peg found Gene standing with his back to the sink, clutching the counter behind him, the Army sergeant halted just to the side of the doorway. Father Shimon, between them, had removed his glasses to wipe away the steam. Peg started to move toward her husband but had to turn away. Never had she seen such terrible devastation in his face, so raw a wound. She looked next at the sergeant, who avoided her eyes by glancing at the priest whose job it was to tell them. But Father Shimon would not stop wiping his glasses, and Peg, feeling herself wanting to scream, to kick over a chair, to thrash about, to do
anything
rather than listen to this awful silence a moment longer, saw her husband's lips move as if to say, “It's Mikey,” but no sound would come out.

Peg scowled at the Army sergeant and said, “Michael died on Thursday.”

Thursday morning, upon waking up, Peg had burst into tears for no apparent reason. Off and on that entire day she had cried, and so that Gene wouldn't know, she had spent the morning by herself down in the sewing room. She decided to make new curtains for the boys' room, and she sewed and sewed but would have to stop because she would begin crying again and couldn't see the material through her tears. She would wait for the tears to pass, pull herself together and sew some more until finally, a little after two o'clock, when she heard Gene leave for the John Deere plant in Waterloo, she stopped sewing altogether.

The following day, yesterday, Friday, Peg had awakened not sad, just angry. No matter what Gene said to her she snapped back, contradicting him, defying him. And seeing the hurt and confusion in his face, she wanted to apologize but instead became angrier still for feeling that need. At noon Peg felt she simply had to get out of the house. She drove off to spend the day with friends who shared her feelings about the war, with whom she could talk about how worried she was, how frustrated she felt trying to find something meaningful to do.

Before Michael had been drafted, the war had appeared so far away, so purposeless and distant. But when Michael was sent to Vietnam, the war no longer seemed remote. A month after Michael was assigned to the Americal Division, Peg wore a black armband on October 15, Moratorium Day, to indicate her opposition to the war. The same day, in La Porte City, an American Legionnaire backed her up against the post office wall, told her she was a disgrace to the country and ordered her to take the armband off. Peg brushed his arm aside and told him, “You better get with it, you sonuvabitch!”

Still, Peg realized, she had never actively campaigned against the war. She had written letters to Jack Miller, Iowa's hawkish Republican Senator to express her opposition. Each time the Des Moines
Register
carried an account of an Iowa boy's death in Vietnam, Peg would forward the clipping to the Senator's office in Washington with the note: “Put another notch in your gun, Jack.” She had written several letters to President Nixon, pleading with him to end the war. She joined Another Mother for Peace, but really, Peg had to concede, her opposition so far had been limited and ineffective.

Yesterday she had not returned to the farm until dusk and, to keep busy, had begun to clean house. For the next six hours she scrubbed and dusted, waxed and polished, pausing only at ten o'clock for the late evening news on television, There was an account of an accidental shelling at Bien Hoa by South Vietnamese artillery resulting in the deaths of about a dozen American men. The story stuck in Peg's mind when she went back to cleaning, and at midnight she called one of the friends she had seen that afternoon to ask if she had watched the news. They talked about how the accidental shelling seemed to epitomize the stupidity and wastefulness of the Vietnam War. Peg told her friend how busy she had been cleaning, that she had felt this compulsion to polish the house from top to bottom. The friend asked Peg if she were expecting visitors.

“No, none that I know of,” Peg had said. “I don't know what's going on with me—I really don't. But whatever it is,” she added, “I'm ready.”

The Army sergeant did not answer her, so Peg spoke again, “Did Michael die on Thursday?”

“Why do you ask me when he died?” Sergeant Fitzgerald said. “I haven't told you your son is dead.”

Peg glared at him with such utter contempt that the sergeant flinched. “You
know
the Army doesn't come to tell parents that their sons are wounded!” Peg said. “You know the Army comes only when they're
dead!
”

The sergeant again turned to the priest, waiting for Father Shimon to break the news, to speak. But the priest was incapable of talking.

Very slowly, deliberately, almost threateningly, Gene Mullen pushed himself away from the sink and moved toward the two men. “Now I want to know the truth!” he told them. “Is … my … boy … dead?”

Sergeant Fitzgerald looked at the priest, then back at Gene and said, “Yes.”

And, “Yes-s-s-s,” Father Shimon said, too, as if he had been holding his breath all this time. “Yes, Gene, yes, Peg, I'm sorry, yes-s-s-s.”

Gene sagged as if hit. He looked at Peg and she at him. Gene stumbled backward until he was again against the sink. He shook his head to and fro like a groggy fighter trying to clear his brain. He began to cry gentle tears that welled up hot in his eyes, overflowed and traced down his cheeks. “Why?” he said to no one in particular. “Why?”

Peg had moved to the kitchen table and stood now gripping the wooden rung of a chairback until she felt herself under enough control to speak. Then she asked the sergeant how Michael had been killed.

Sergeant Fitzgerald sorted through some papers and pulled one out. “I only know the official casualty message given me by Fifth Army Headquarters this morning over the phone.”

“Read it,” Peg said.

The sergeant lifted the paper to the light. “It states that ‘Sergeant (E-5) Michael Eugene Mullen, US 54 93—' so on, ‘died while at a night defensive position when artillery fire from friendly forces landed in the area.'” Sergeant Fitzgerald's hand dropped. “I'm sorry … I really am very sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Mullen.…” He put the paper away and began buttoning up his trench coat as if to leave. “Generally, at this time,” he said, “families of casualties prefer to be alone with their priests—”

“Sit down,” Peg said quietly.

“Perhaps,” Sergeant Fitzgerald was saying, “tomorrow would be a better time to—”

“Sit down!
” Peg repeated firmly. “We're going to talk about this message, this, this official casualty report.”

Gene watched the sergeant leaf back through his papers, start to say, “Mrs. Mullen, I only—”

“Sergeant,” Gene ordered, “read that thing again.”

Fitzgerald cleared his throat. “‘Sergeant (E-5) Michael Eugene Mullen, US 54 93 22 54, died while at a night defensive position when artillery fire from friendly forces landed in the area.'” He looked up from the paper. “That's all it says … really.”

“Listen,” Gene said, “I was a master sergeant in the United States Army, myself, during World War Two, and I … and I.…” He stopped, no longer certain what the point was that he had wished to make.

“We're going to talk about this message,” Peg said. “I want you to explain it to me. This word, what do you mean by ‘friendly'?”

“It merely means that it wasn't enemy artillery,” the sergeant said. “Your son was killed by friendly fire.”

“Friendly fire?
Friendly fire?”
Peg repeated incredulously.

Sergeant Fitzgerald shrugged lamely. “It means any artillery from forces not the enemy.”

“Not
the enemy!
Goddamn you!”
Peg cried, beating the chairback with her fists in frustration. “You couldn't even give him the … the decency of being killed by the enemy!” She glared at the sergeant. “These, these ‘friendly forces not the enemy,' how come the word ‘American' isn't used?”

The back door opened, and Michael's younger brother, John, finished with his chores came up the stairs and into the kitchen. He peered curiously at the Army sergeant first and next at the priest, then at his mother and father before quietly taking a place by the door.

“Why wasn't the word ‘American' used?” Peg repeated.

“Because it wasn't ‘American,'” the sergeant said.

“And why wasn't the word ‘accidental' there?”

“Because, Mrs. Mullen, it wasn't an accident.”

“Wait a minute,” Peg warned ominously.

Sergeant Fitzgerald began talking about the accidental shelling at Bien Hoa.

“We know all about Bien Hoa,” Peg snapped.

“Well,” Sergeant Fitzgerald said, “this is how and where your son was killed.”

There was a sudden moan, and before Peg could reach John, his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor. Gene rushed over and, with Peg, eased their son into a chair. “Oh, poor John,” Peg said, “are you all right?”

“Take it easy, son,” Gene said.

“Michael's dead?” John asked.

“What were you thinking?” Peg asked him. “I thought you knew. I thought seeing the Army car.…”

“No, I never, I never thought of Michael,” John said. “I thought they were after me! That I'd done something wrong!”